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Monday, January 9, 2012

This Mother's Heart And My Warriors Challenge

My son went to Iraq twice. He served our country honorably. While in the Marine Corps he always seemed to be sick.When he was in Iraq, I had to send him cold remedies because he could not shake a flu he picked up.

When he came home and went to college he suffered terribly from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Through it all he tried to maintain his I am okay persona. I knew he was suffering but I had no idea how much. He excelled in college and I thought it would all work itself out. Slowly he shared his experiences with me and I knew he was going to be okay. Then with in the last 6 months he started to struggle,emotionally and physically, he had a cough. A cold he could not shake. Then a little over 2 months ago he could not talk. He started to wheeze and he had a horrible cough. He can not sing, playing his horn which is his life has become very hard for him to do. He is exhausted all the time. The VA kept telling him he was okay that it was an allergy. They took X-rays, gave him antibiotics, inhalers, one after another and nothing worked. Christmas Day he stood up and passed out on my living room floor. He refused to let me call 911. It wasn't the first moment I knew he was very sick, but it was the first time I thought I may lose my son.I kept telling him that they knew at the VA what was up and to make them fix him. He only said they are trying. I pushed him to go to an outside doctor or to an emergency room but he thought it would be a waste of time, that they would fix him.

He can't stay awake and he is swelling up from the medications, nothing is making him better. Last night I started to search and was shocked at what I found, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans are coming down with an unexplained lung disease. My son has all the symptoms. I read that they are not telling the men and women what is happening to them. They are treating them as they did my son as if it were a cold, allergy or bronchitis. When my son said they tested him for cancer I was alarmed and I knew that under it all they knew and expected the worst. They knew what was happening and they knew it was caused from the waste pits they burn in the camps. Those pits that billow out deathly fumes that fill their lungs and causing them to get sick. This problem has gone before Congress who passed a law to stop the burn pits. These people at the VA KNOW there is no way they did not know what was wrong with my son. The only way to diagnose this is to do a lung biopsy,they did not do it, he has to go to a specialist and for all these months they just watched as he got worse.

I got my son to call the VA Emergency room last night and request to go to the local emergency room , but they said no and suggested he wait to see a VA doctor today. But I have read in the many reports that said when they are dizzy and falling. When they cough like he is they need to be in the hospital, yet last night they told him to wait to see a doctor today. Today he did go and see a doctor and they finally referred him to a specialist, unknown date and time, they will let him know. The wheels of this bureaucratic mess is maddening. But at least they are turning.

Sodium Dichtomate is a carcinogen it is deadly. They burned sulfer in the pits also which is also a carcinogen and deadly.

** The military disposes of trash at bases in Iraq and Afghanistan by burning as much as 240 tons of it a day in open pits. All of the soldiers tested due to complaints about shortness of breath came through chest X-rays and CT scans with clean bills of health. There was a set of soldiers(special forces) who volunteered for a procedure to obtain lung cell samples, and when Miller examined the biopsies, 50 of 54 showed constrictive bronchiolitis — a rare lung disease that closes the tiniest airways.

All of this started in 2003, I am besides myself I feel so responsible, I taught my children to love our country and to trust our Government. I pushed my son into joining the military and serving. I wish to God that I had not.

Tell people about this. If you have a loved one that was over seas or is, make sure they know about his.If they smoke MAKE THEM QUIT, smoking seems to be a trigger.